What Americans Really Think About Retirement Planning

Retirement is keeping Americans up at night. Almost 7 in 10 say financial uncertainty has made them feel depressed and anxious, up 8% from 2023, according to Northwestern Mutual’s 2025 Planning and Progress Study. Meanwhile, 51% told surveyors they’ll outlive their savings.

That anxiety is pushing people to seek help, as Americans are increasingly turning to human advisors and digital tools, including robo-advisors and AI-powered planning apps, to get their retirement on track.

Americans Are Testing AI—But Not Betting Their Retirement on It

The anxiety cuts deepest for younger Americans. Among Gen Z and Millennials, about 4 in 10 say they feel depressed or anxious about their finances on at least a weekly basis—up significantly from 2023.

There’s evidence that professional help works: three-quarters (76%) of Americans with a financial advisor describe their finances as “strong,” compared with just 44% without one. But only about 27% of Americans work with a traditional advisor, as fees and balance requirements put them out of reach for many.

That gap is driving experimentation. In a 2024 Ipsos/BMO poll, about 37% of Americans said they were already using AI to help them manage their money, most commonly to learn about personal finance, build budgets, or evaluate investment ideas.

Yet almost two‑thirds in the same survey said AI is incapable of understanding how emotions impact financial decisions—exactly the kind of subtlety that matters for decisions around retirement. In other words, people seem willing to let an algorithm run the numbers, but want a human being to double-check a financial plan and have the ability to adjust or override it.

Where Americans Turn for Trust in Financial Advice

Even as AI use expands, most Americans still trust humans over machines, especially when it comes to personal finances. In the Northwestern Mutual survey, respondents were asked who they trusted more when it came to creating a retirement plan. Most (56%) chose human advisors. Just 13% chose AI. However, most respondents said they’d prefer to work with a human advisor who also uses AI.

Digital financial tools aren’t new—robo-advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront have been around for over a decade, offering lower-cost, algorithm-driven portfolio management. What’s changed is the emergence of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, which can answer open-ended questions and simulate the back-and-forth of a conversation with a human advisor.

But generative AI provides new risks. Unlike a robo-advisor that follows a set algorithm, AI chatbots can misunderstand context or give advice that sounds confident but isn’t personalized to your situation. For retirement planning, where the stakes are high and mistakes compound over decades, that’s a genuine concern.

Perhaps that’s why, when it came to trusted sources of financial information, 42% of households turned to their bank or credit union in the prior year. By contrast, only about 3% of households reported using general AI chatbots or robo‑advisor apps. A 2024 J.D. Power survey similarly reported that only 27% of bank customers trust AI for financial information and advice, even as many expect it to make everyday banking more convenient in the coming years.

In the end, most people seem to want a mix of both, as surveys show Americans prefer a hybrid model for financial advice—AI for speed and number-crunching, plus a human advisor for judgment, trust, and personalization.

Here’s how AI and human advisors compare: